Typical nurse management of patient alerts utilizes stationary computer terminals located at, for example, a nursing station associated with a nursing unit. The stationary terminals are manned by unit secretaries who receive alerts or other important information related to patients on the unit. The unit secretary then identifies the clinicians assigned to those patients and may attempt to contact the clinicians through a variety of methods such as electronic paging, calling a patient's room to see if the clinician is in the room, or overhead paging. Clinicians then either have to call the unit secretary or return to the nursing station to retrieve the alerting information. The result is inefficient communication, unproductive workflows, and time lags between when alerting information is received and when it is acted on by the clinician.
In those situations where a patient alert is pushed to a clinician's mobile device, the alert often lacks important patient-contextual information, such as medical values, images, or device readings associated with the alert, that help the clinician in deciding how to appropriately respond to the alert. The clinician must then either return to the nursing station to access the information or open up a computer application on the mobile device to access the needed information—both of which consume valuable time resources. Further, a lack of visibility and coordination between clinicians receiving the same alert prevents clinicians from being aware of who is responding to an alert and what is happening at the alarm source.